faith and culture

Note: This article is part of a continuing series on Catholicism and art. William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was an English artist who created realistic, richly detailed and symbolic renderings of sacred scenes. He was a founding member of the group of artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which advocated returning to the observation of nature and looking back to the […]

BREAKING NEWS!!!! – April 8, 2016, Vatican City. Pope Francis, the 266th successor of the first pope, St. Peter, and head of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, released the long awaited document Amoris Laetitia on Friday. In this Apostolic Exhortation, Francis pulled together his teaching after two years of Synods on Marriage, the Family, and […]

Note: This movie review is part of a continuing series of articles on Catholicism and art. I’m resistant to current movies as a rule, vastly preferring the old classics, but I recently decided to take a chance on Joel and Ethan Coen’s Hail, Caesar! I had heard of the film’s religious subtext and was intrigued […]

Virtuoso violinist and musical mystic, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) wrote flamboyantly colorful music which exudes a distinctively Catholic spirit. The Baroque era, of which he was a leading light, was dedicated to the idea that music had the power to express universal human emotions and states of the soul. Not only vocal music, but instrumental as […]

On February 2 we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation, also known as Candlemas, marking the official end of the larger Christmas season. This feast commemorates the day when the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph took the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem to be “presented” to God, in observance of Jewish law […]